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Academic sell-out: how an obsession with metrics and rankings is damaging academia

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  • Thorsten Gruber

Abstract

Increasingly, academics have to demonstrate that their research has academic impact. Universities normally use journal rankings and journal impact factors to assess the research impact of individual academics. More recently, citation counts for individual articles and the h -index have also been used to measure the academic impact of academics. There are, however, several serious problems with relying on journal rankings, journal impact factors and citation counts. For example, articles without any impact may be published in highly ranked journals or journals with high impact factor, whereas articles with high impact could be published in lower ranked journals or journals with low impact factor. Citation counts can also be easily gamed and manipulated, and the h -index disadvantages early career academics. This paper discusses these and several other problems and suggests alternatives such as post-publication peer review and open-access journals.

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  • Thorsten Gruber, 2014. "Academic sell-out: how an obsession with metrics and rankings is damaging academia," Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(2), pages 165-177, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jmkthe:v:24:y:2014:i:2:p:165-177
    DOI: 10.1080/08841241.2014.970248
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    Cited by:

    1. Malgorzata Karpinska-Krakowiak & Edyta Rudawska & Barbara Mroz-Gorgon & Lukasz Skowron, 2021. "Academic Research on Marketing in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Scholarly Papers Published in Polish versus International Journals," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(Special 2), pages 198-209.
    2. Buckley, Ralf, 2019. "Tourism publications as newly tradeable commodities: Academic performance, prestige, power, competition, constraints and consents," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 121-133.
    3. Jianhua Hou & Bili Zheng & Yang Zhang & Chaomei Chen, 2021. "How do Price medalists’ scholarly impact change before and after their awards?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 5945-5981, July.
    4. Nicky Agate & Rebecca Kennison & Stacy Konkiel & Christopher P. Long & Jason Rhody & Simone Sacchi & Penelope Weber, 2020. "The transformative power of values-enacted scholarship," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 7(1), pages 1-12, December.
    5. Reddy, Kotapati Srinivasa, 2015. "Higher Education, High-impact Research and University Rankings: A Case of India," MPRA Paper 63658, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2015.

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